What to Wear When Attending the Overthrow of Your Democracy

Have you ever been to a party, just sipping a drink, munching on snacks, chatting with whoever you came with, and checking out some fine-looking people when suddenly, religious zealots took over, separated LGBTQ couples and forced women and even young girls to deliver babies? If you weren’t (yet) one of those being dominated and attacked, you might look on while munching your handful of Doritos 3-D Crunch Chili Cheese Nacho Chips and say to yourself, “What the fuck? Are you kidding?”

The thing about unexpected and extreme acts is that they seem unreal at first. Remember Trump coming down the escalator then growling about Mexicans being criminals and rapists? Be honest, was your reaction, “Now this is a legitimate candidate for president, I have to do everything I can starting now to prevent him from taking power!” Or did it include or resemble the phrase, “deluded racist nutbag o’plenty”?

They really should make a Waze-type app that shows you where you are in history, what destination you’re nearing, and if there’s a Starbucks along the way. If there was such an app, it would show Americans were already on the outskirts of Theocracy and continuing towards Tyranny…which naturally has a number of non-unionized Starbucks there.

It’s hard for us, as Americans, to really accept that we’ve already got one foot in theocracy with our corrupt and stacked Supreme Court. This unethical, bigoted, religious extremist majority on the court is quickly erasing the wall between church and state, has made women the property of government, and have promised to decide a case in their next session that could literally end our democracy. Other than that, I’m told that they will declare Mel Gibson’s “Passion of the Christ” the greatest film ever made that’s possible and thus outlaw the need to make any further films of any kind.

So yeah, we’re nearing an autocratic overthrow of our democracy and it’s no coincidence that it is happening as Elon Musk is trying to out-populate all people of color. We have come close to tyranny before but never this close (Satan is rolling his eyes at having to let Nixon and Joseph McCarthy out of their iron maidens to make room for Trump and Mitch McConnell).

What does the impending approach of a dictatorship feel like? We don’t know because it’s never happened before but I’m pretty sure it feels like today feels. Everything pretty much seems normal in our day-to-day lives…except for the constant mass shootings, racist militias marching and occasional attempts to violently prevent the peaceful transfer of power in a democracy…oh, and hang or kidnap politicians. But damn, have you seen gas prices lately? At least the Republicans appear to have a plan to lower gas prices, by supporting the arming of deranged MAGAs to commit mass murderers and so terrify the public about being among groups of people that they stay home and don’t drive to events anymore, thus lowering demand for gas, gas prices, life expectancies and freedom. Now that’s a Republican-brand bargain!

So…we’re on this long but nearly-over drive to theocracy/autocracy and many of us also seem too tired to even ask, “Are we there yet?”

“Yes, we’re almost there, you can go to the bathroom when we get there though we have to check your genitals first to make sure you go to the right one.”

What we should be doing though is looking out the car window and see what direction we’re going, kicking the driver’s seat from the back and yelling, “You’re going the wrong way!!!” To strip down the allegory, this is what voting this November is, our opportunity to grab the wheel (you don’t have to also choke the driver a la Trump) as we declare, “You’re going the wrong way!”

Some people, including some attention-starved Democrats, are howling, “You see, voting doesn’t matter, look where we are now! We should just let go of the steering wheel since this car has never driven us to Rainbow Unicorn Land! Sure, driving in this direction saved the nation from the worst economic and health crisis in our history, put many good judges in lifetime positions, put needed money in Americans pockets, lowered unemployment to historical levels, is helping Ukraine fight Russia on our and the rest of the free world’s behalf…but that still ain’t putting a rainbow unicorn under my ass!”

As I told Mick Jagger many times, “You can’t always get what you want but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get groupies.” We have a 50/50 Senate and 2 of those 50 Dems still have their price tag attached and “Property of Koch Industries” stamped on their foreheads. So Democrats only need 2 more loyal Democrats in The Senate along with holding The House to overturn the filibuster and throw the gates wide open of the Rainbow Unicorn corral.

Meanwhile, it is pretty important to wake up those napping along the way on this drive to Tyranny so they can see that we’re about to run over that nice little Lady Liberty trying to cross the road. There’s no time to be verbose or indirect about it, we have to yell as loud as we can, “LOOK OUT!”

Look out! The Republicans want to pass a national abortion ban! Look out! The Republicans want to end Social Security and Medcicare! Look out! They want more guns and mass shootings to scare more people into buying more guns then having more mass shootings to scare people to…you get the circular logic here. Republicans want to end democracy by allowing gerrymandered state legislatures the right to tear up your vote and declare their party’s candidate the winner in any election. Look out, they want to destroy your 1st Amendment rights by outlawing protests and forcing college students and professors to state their political beliefs. Look out, Republicans want to ban books and warp history to brainwash and groom our youth and diminish the truths about the wrongs of slavery and civil rights abuses.

Sometimes Democrats are like the cliche nerd in 1980s movies and tv, telling the bully who is beating him up, “I don’t want to to be too harsh but you’re not being very nice right now! Oww!”

Some Democrats are punching back against this not-so-slow-moving-coup over our democracy but we really need all Democratic politicians to be driving in the same direction and with a bit of urgency. They need to campaign this November by strongly calling out the Republicans on who they actually are and what they’re doing and not give a damn if they go running to the press to cry, “They hit me in my sedition and it hur-r-r-rts!”

Here you go, Democrats, shampoo, rinse, repeat:

“Republicans are anti-American because they’re anti-voting!”

“Republicans are pro-rapist, pro-incest and pro-child-abuse because they’ve made it the law that women and children must have forced pregnancies from these heinous acts.”

“Republicans are pro-mass-shootings because they don’t want to take away weapons of war out of the hands of mass-murderers.”

“Republicans are fascist because they want to turn their extremist religious beliefs into laws against the majority of Americans who don’t share them.”

“Republicans are anti-American because they supported or looked the other way when Trump and his Republican cronies tried to overthrow our democracy through deceit and assaults by mobs using brutal and deadly force.”

Now how hard was that? Democrats? You don’t need to always play defense against the knowingly-false propaganda of the Republicans. How ’bout this, Republicans howl that Democrats want open borders, caravans of criminals crossing the border and moan about Replacement Theory and you reply with one of the above instead of playing their game?

Republicans: “Democrats want to kill babies, they want to abort even after the baby is born!!!”

Democrats: “Republicans are pro-rapist, pro-incest and pro-child-abuse because they want women and children to have forced pregnancies from these heinous acts.”

Republicans: “What? How dare you say that!”

Democrats: “Admit it! You want a 10-year-old to become fully pregnant and give birth?! At 10 years old? You are sick!”

Republicans: “But-but-but…the caravans are coming!!!”

Democrats: “The caravans are always coming whenever an election is coming but you’ll always be sick for giving a green light to rapists to be able to choose any 10-year-old little girl to be the mother of their child! And then enforce his custody rights and force him to be in her life forever! You and your party are depraved!”

Republicans: “Hey! Are they allowed to talk to me that way? I thought only we get to accuse them of terrible things and what’s really not fair is that we at least make everything up! They’re attacking me on what I actually say! That’s not fair!”

Democrats: “Tell it to the 10-year-old girl you’re forcing to give birth and have her entire future destroyed!”

Republicans: “Uh…”

Democrats: “That’s what I thought.”

You know, Democrats don’t need to be passive to be principled. Sometimes throwing a principled punch is called for, especially when it comes to self-defense. And that’s the whole point about trying to get people to see where we’re at as a country and society right now. We are in the midst of being beaten up, the SCOTUS, Republican state legislatures and media entities, especially those on the Far Right (but looking at you too, MSM) are kicking us and democracy in the balls…right now!

Dress them all up in the phrases that truly suit those trying to overthrow Americans’ rights and freedoms. And we should dress ourselves up in the American principles that we respect and stand for. We’ll see them at the party in November, calling attention to them with all the other guests, pointing out how they look in the ugly issues they wear, and enlisting the other guests in helping us throw them out the door.

How should one dress when attending the overthrow of your country?

Dress for success.